THE REASONER AND THEOLOGICAL REGISTER. They who believe that they have Truth ask no favour, save that of being heard: they dare the judgment of Mankind: refused Co-operation, they invoke Opposition, for Opposition is their Opportunity.-Editor. THE FOLLY OF FEARING DEATH. FROM the earliest period to which my memory reaches, to the present moment, the subject of death has been, by my Christian friends, continually represented as a something that I should especially dread; but, after careful reflection, I am led to think there is about it a great misapprehension. In the Bible we are informed there was a time when death had no existence in the world, and that its introduction herein was a punishment for the infringement of an injunction given to the first pair of mortals. Suppose it to be the fact, then death must be proved to be something both painful and awful, or it is no punishment at all, and the superstructure raised upon these premises is tottering. What evidence have we to testify that pangs are experienced at death? Have the Bible believers any amongst them who have returned from the dead to aver it? In reading the Bible, I cannot help seeing there is introduced a statement of the case that altogether diverges from the one usually insisted on by priests. It is to the effect that instead of death being the consequence of eating from this forbidden tree, death was rather the consequence of not eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life as well, and that fearing they should do so God turned them out of the Garden of Eden altogether. But, passing by this view of the case, it appears the immediate effects were, in scripture words, to have their eyes opened -thus bearing testimony to the truth of what the devil-serpent (or, as Adam Clarke renders it, monkey) had foretold should happen if they ate. Now, to carry out the idea that death is a punishment, the Bible should have named the tree 'the tree of death' instead of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;' and that the latter view was entertained by the God depicted is clear, for when Adam and his wife hid away, God called to them--and when Adam said he hid because he was naked, God is made to reply' Who told thee thou wert naked?' &c., &c., from which, always supposing the statement as true, it is clear the eating of the fruit of the tree brought knowledge instead of death. Now, sir, who are the parties who are supposed to view death as a punishment? First, priests, who believe there is a necessity to have a legion of intermediate parties between a man and his God, and who disseminate the dogma of the fear of death. To describe a second class, I will quote a few lines from the immortal Hood; and, after reading them, I should say you will think it no mystery why he died a beggar. He says [No. 192]. Behold yon servitor of God and Mammon, LONE PENNY.] [No. 4, Vol. VIII. Blends Gospel texts with trading gammon, But who on earth can say I am not pious?' To such men as these the fear of death may be terrible, but to those who live virtuously why should it be so? The wisest of mankind conclude death to be an annihilation of sensation-feeling pain in departing life is out of the question. I should say to be born is the more painful operation of the two. Birth might not inaptly be termed the King of Terrors instead of death-and, as I have somewhere read, death might more appropriately be termed the terror of kings. According to the orthodox view of death, it is usually spoken of in the same breath as a ruthless destroyer, the source of anguish, misery, consternation, and despair. Yet they assume to contemplate it with rapture as relieving them from the incubus of the flesh, the barrier to their spiritual enjoyment of such a creator and such a heaven as they delight to portray. What inconsistency this appears to be, to pretend to long for a spiritual communication with heavenly beings, only to be possessed by a separation of the flesh and the spirit, i. e., death, and yet to propound death, which is the realisation of their aspirations, as a punishment. It would have been much more consistent with their professed theories to have made Jesus Christ introduce death upon the earth as a means to enable his followers to cast off their corporeal frames, and with their spirits divested of the necessity of eating and drinking, to have entered into immediate possession of the promised state of bliss. But the fact is, there is a difference between profession and belief. Does the poor man who can barely exist, whose male children let loose, without education, on the world, and who have been or will be transported-whose female children, after striving for years against inevitable destruction, have at last become lost to virtue-whose wife has died from an accumulation of miseries-but who still has a heart prompting him to share his crust with his half-starved neighbour, I ask, does he consider death as aught to be dreaded? Certainly not: and if he be a believer in the Christian theory, he will view it as the first step to comfort, ease, and prosperity (hitherto unknown), where in an everlasting paradise he will snooze in the bosom of the patriarch appointed to receive him, instead of, as on the earth before death, starving on the crumbs that fall from rich tables, and finding only dogs kind enough to tend his sores. To such a one death is anything but terrible; but those whom it summons from undeserved feasts and from unearned plenty, which they never shared with their fellow man-to tyrants who pervert justice, and who practically believe only in the few lines of the New Testament which say that all the world should be taxed-to those money grubs who exist but to add house to house and field to field, forgetting that the rich man is but the steward of his wealth. To these I grant death may be terrible, not from the nature of death, but from moral apprehension, caused by a life of crime, that there may be another life, and therein there may be retribution for evil deeds. In addition to all this, the control we have over death in causing it, putting it off, or palliating it, entirely denudes it of any idea of its being what theologians teach We have good authority for thinking that saints never sleep, therefore our correspondent should not say 'snooze;' better thus-recline on that Jewish ottoman, the bosom of Abraham.-ED. us to believe. If death be a punishment, it should be equally endured; but statistics testify that death is mainly regulated and governed by the prosperity or poverty of a man or body of men-by anything, in short, but merit. Allow me to refer you to a table of the average ages at which men of three different grades died in the year 1846, in Edinburgh and Leith : No. I, composed of gentry and profes-} Their mean age at death was 434 years. sional nen .............. By this table we are shown that death is man's vassal as regards time-in fact, that wealth and the consequent relief from the cares and sorrows of life add sixteen years to a gentleman's life. Why really, living to the poor seems to me to merit more the name of a punishment. Now if death can be modified by the improvements of science or wise sanitary measures; if it can be shown, as it can in some cases-those, for instance, of protracted pain in an incurable disease-to be a relief; if it can be shown by analogy, that the act of death is not so painful as the act of birth; what are we to think of a system in which it is used as a bugbear as a threat to scare the credulous and weak? It has been said the children of this world are wiser than the children of light; if it means that theologians are the children of light, I believe it. For it is certain the children of the world are beginning to see that the moral and physical laws of man are like the laws that govern the stars, certain and unvarying. There is no difference or respect felt by those laws to a prelate more than a pauper-we must enter the arena of the world, not with theories, but with facts, and not like sectaries and bigots, to frighten the nervous of mankind with pernicious and useless apprehension. The time is fast approaching when man will clearly see that the only idea that can be gleaned of what the heavenly powers wish them to believe in, must be obtained from a study of Nature's works. These thinkers will live and enjoy the world, and reciprocate good and kind feelings one with the other; while those who think the author of nature is as priests of the Bible proclaim him-obstinate, proud, revengeful, vascillating, and inefficient-will suffer on in fear and doubt. May you, sir, and your readers, be found among those who-observing the laws by which nature is governed, and by living in accordance therewith-avoid the penalties incurred by the ignorant who infringe them, and then accuse God or anything else but their own obstinacy. Those who live to enjoy and to learn, will, each day they live, have a more perfect conception of how the great whole works together for good, and to them threats of death will pass harmlessly by as the idle wind which they respect not, R. L.B. ORIGINAL LETTER BY M. CHARLES HEINZEN, TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.' [Concluded from page 23.] But Anti-Socialist' was dishonest enough to insinuate that I meant 'everybody who differs with M. Charles Heinzen in opinion.' Therefore, in order to be consistent, even with the respectable Mr. Lamennais, as well as with the 'reactionaries,' the great number of heads to be cut, according to my revolutionary reckonings, has been made the subject of a polemic directed against me. But I must beg you to consider that I never have maintained that, at all events, two millions of heads must be cut off. Such a passionate arithmetician I am not even in the midst of revolutioneering. I have expressly only stated the possibility that the impending European revolution might cost two millions of heads, and I have connected with this possibility the opinion, that even such a great sacrifice would not be too high a price, i by means of it, and only by its means, the happiness of two hundred millions of men could be bought. If this great aim can be attained at a lower price than one per cent., I am economical enough to vote in favour of a reduction; for I confess to you, sir, I love human blood indeed only when I see it glowing in living cheeks. But as nobody hitherto has shown me the possibility of conquering liberty without shedding blood, or to save the blood of the friends of liberty without shedding the blood of its enemies, I consider it to be practical, nay, even to be quite humane, to make complete and radical the revolutionary cure of the disorder, called the Holy Alliance. I do not think that I am the only holder of these opinions even in England, since the Globe, which in Germany is called a ministerial organ, lately declared that it would be quite natural if the next revolution against the Holy Alliance should make use of the guillotine. I find still more important support of this view in your famous countryman, Macaulay, who is an authority for all the world, and who writes as follows:-' For it is in truth more merciful to extirpate a hundred thousand human beings at once, and to fill the void with a well-governed population, than to misgovern millions through a long succession of generations. We can much more pardon tremendous severities inflicted for a great object, than an endless series of paltry vexations and oppressions inflicted for no rational object at all.'-(Macaulay's answer to W. Temple's Collections of Essays, vol. 2, p. 528, sixth edition.) So far Macaulay. I ask you, sir, if these words, translated into the language of my pamphlet, have a meaning different from the passages so furiously attacked, which follows:-'It is possible that the great revolutionary cure which Europe is approaching will cost a couple of million heads. Can, however, the lives of a couple of million scoundrels be taken into account when the happiness of 200,000,000 of men is at stake?' I have stated that the question of asylum must be in the next European revolution as a decided party question. You, sir, make a jest of this, and would apply this principle to me before the outbreak of that revolution: and you think that it is a wonder that I am allowed to live still in Bayswater. But, sir, you do not embarrass me by giving this turn to the question. The party against which I have predicted the war of extermination, is represented by Nicholas, the emperor of Russia, Haynau, Radetzski, the Prince of Prussia, and similar paladines of humanity. You force me into the position of considering myself, and my party also, as a power opponent to those powers, and I ask you, sir, if the English nation would take the part of those bloody men, or of their revolutionary enemies? You know the English nation better than I. If you can earnestly assure me that the English nation would take the part of Nicholas, Haynau, and the rest, you may take it for granted that I should not live any longer in 'Bayswater,' and should, upon the first opportunity, travel some thousand miles further off. I am sure, sir, you will not advise me to seek an asylum in Russia, for the clear reason that I should at least be surrendered from Russia to Prussia, and be beheaded by the Prussians, because, to Russia, the question of asylum is a decided party question.' I grant that the Emperor of Russia is, in this respect, according to his point of view, perfectly in the right. The reactionaries' are ordinarily more consistent than the revolutionaries; they are consistent as far as their power reaches, while the revolutionaries ordinarily, and out of generosity, leave their power unused to their own ruin. Russia tried to be consistent when she asked from Turkey the surrender of the Hungarian refugees, and her demands would have been granted if Lord Palmerstor had not commanded Russian consistency to stop short. To Lord Palmerston the question of asylum was likewise a decided party question, and his choice was such a one that I have reason to believe that I shall not have to leave Bayswater.' But if England had no. fleet, very likely Louis Kossuth would hang on the gallows, and Charles Heinzen would not have committed the stupidity of coming to Bayswater.' You declared it a contradiction that I call it dishonourable and low to persecute, like a criminal, a defenceless refugee, while I demand that, for the reactionary refugees, nothing should be certain upon the whole earth except a grave. This apparent contradiction ceased immediately, if you consider that I have not only appealed to my defencelessness, but also to my character and my exertions. If a murderer flies from the continent to England, he will be surrendered notwithstanding his defencelessness'nothing is certain to him upon the whole earth except a grave.' Well, my aim is only that the murderers of nations should at least be treated on the same footing as ordinary murderers. Is it not a monstrous anomaly, that whilst the Mannings have heen hanged because they have killed a single man for his money, Haynau, who has slaughtered thousands for the sake of tyranny, who has laid waste many towns and enslaved whole nations, should be allowed to spend his plunder in England as a 'defenceless refugee ?' If the reactionaries look upon their enemies as criminals, because they struggled for liberty, why should the revolutionaries not look upon their enemies as criminals, because they have murdered liberty? It is a proof that our notions of right on this subject are false and absurd, when crime is not pursued wherever it takes shelter behind power and gold, and when there is a European Nemesis for common criminals, but none for the criminals against humanity. The reactionaries are accustomed to treat the economical question as consistently as the question of asylum. When a revolution has been conquered, the reactionaries not only take away the fortunes of the revolutionaries, or levy contributions upon them-as Haynau has done to the Jews of Pesth, and Radetzski to the Lombards-but they direct their claims also against foreign countries. Austria has claimed from Turkey great sums which Kossuth is said to have taken with him for the benefit of his nation. The government of Baden, after having been reinstated by Prussian bayonets, have prevailed upon the obsequious French republic to imprison, as a thief, the man whom the people had made a secretary of the finances-because they presumed, however erroneously, that he might have saved some money. Similar things have happened in Switzerland. Well, I grant that the reactionaries are, according to their point of view, perfectly in the right; but I demand that the revolutionaries should occasionally follow their example, and surpass it in consistency. This consistency seemed to distress AntiSocialist' very much, perhaps on account of his secret sympathies in favour of the German princes-of some of whom it has been said, that they have only in the last year placed about thirty millions of pounds sterling in the Bank of England, in case they should suddenly arrive in 'Bayswater,' or some other part of London,' as defenceless refugees.' The German princes have not earned these or other sums of money through the work of their hands or their heads. They have simply, if you will allow me this expression, stolen them from the German nation. I must now leave it to the English nation to decide, whether they one day will judge the great thieves in the same manner as the little ones, and whether they will approve of the consistency of the reactionaries, but condemn the consistency of the revolutionaries. The English nation is considered to be |